Recently we celebrated the fact that before Ariana Grande, Pete Davidson, Justin Bieber, and Halsey owned the regrettable tattoo space, Zac Efron was the king.
We are, of course, referring to Zac Efron’s iconic ‘YOLO’ tattoo, emblazoned on his hand.
The year was 2011, and the term ‘YOLO’ was only just coming into popularity as a wholesome acronym that declared ‘You Only Live Once’ as if it were a call to action. “Carpe diem!” it seemed to say. “Live your best life!” it suggested.
The term quickly went from genuine to ironic, mocked far and wide in the meme-iverse. But there it was, on golden boy Zac Efron’s hand, like a gentle reminder that we all make mistakes.
So it is with great sadness that we share the brutal truth: Zac Efron’s YOLO tattoo is gone.
It’s actually been gone for a while, missing from photos as far back as 2014. It might have disappeared from existence even earlier, and simply lived on in our memories for all this time.
As we saw when Ariana Grande accidentally got ‘Japanese style BBQ’ instead of ‘7 Rings’ inked on her hand, hand tattoos do fade. So maybe Zac’s YOLO tattoo simply came to the end of its natural life cycle. Or maybe he had it removed, we can’t say for sure.
But Zac Efron just seems too awesome to have his YOLO tattoo intentionally removed, so we are just going to live in the truth that it faded, and he misses it just as much as we do.